


Concoction Conundrum

by angel



Category: White Collar
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 13:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel/pseuds/angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's sick and once again turns to Mozzie for help.  Things turn out much differently this time around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Concoction Conundrum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [citrinesunset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrinesunset/gifts).



Peter knew that he shouldn't have drank Mozzie's new honey cure-all concoction, but he felt so ill that he didn't know what else to do. He was spending the weekend with Neal when the flu he'd been trying to fight for most of the week knocked him off his feet. The concoction itself knocked him out for the night.

When he woke in the morning, tucked into Neal's 800-thread count sheets, he didn't feel like himself. He rolled onto his back and stretched out his limbs as far as they would go. It felt amazing. _He_ felt amazing. What the hell did Mozzie put in that stuff?

"Peter?" Neal sounded concerned. He was stretched out on his side the bed, no longer asleep either.

"Don't worry. I feel much better," he hurried to assure his partner, but his voice came out high-pitched and squeaky. "What the hell?"

Neal's eyes were wide when Peter fought his way out of the covers and sat up.

"What? What is it?"

"Uh, well…" Neal bit his lip and pointed to the mirror beside his bed. "Maybe you should see for yourself."

Peter moved to get up but wound up falling to the floor when his legs weren't long enough to reach to the ground. He stood up with his back to the mirror and slowly turned around. He was no longer a fifty-year-old man nor was he wearing anything besides a overly large t-shirt.

He was still staring at the miniature version of himself in the mirror when Neal stood from where he'd been sitting on the edge of the bed and grabbed his cell phone. "I'm calling Mozzie."

~~!!~~

After recovering from his initial shock, Peter pulled on a pair of Neal's boxers which, much to his surprise, almost fit his ten-year-old body. He also put on one of Neal's t-shirts and sat at the table while Neal cooked breakfast.

"Stop staring!" he snapped when he caught Neal looking at him for the twelfth time in ten minutes. 

"Sorry, sorry." Neal turned back to the eggs he was scrambling. "It's just so weird. How does it feel?"

"Weird."

"And?"

Peter sighed. "I have all this energy that I don't know what to do with. I feel like I could run ten laps around the block and then jog the stairs about fifty times." 

Neal laughed, and Peter sighed again. 

"Where's Mozzie?"

"He'll be here soon. He was all the way out on Long Island when I called."

"What was he doing out there?"

Neal shrugged. "Tending to his bees, I guess. I made him move them off the terrace when they started trying to migrate inside."

"Damn bees," Peter muttered.

He watched Neal dish out the eggs on plates that already held bacon and pieces of toast. Then, Neal set them on the table beside Peter's orange juice and his own mimosa. 

They ate in silence until the door opened and Mozzie stepped inside. He stopped mid-step when he saw Peter, titled his head right and then left, and blinked. "Huh."

"Is that all you have to say?!" Peter jumped to his feet and put his hands on his hips. "Change me back!"

"Well…" Mozzie glanced over Peter's head and Peter looked back to see Neal snickering behind his glass of mimosa. 

"Stop that!" Peter shook a finger at Neal before turning back to Mozzie. "Do something!"

"He's even more bossy when he's half-size," Mozzie said as he walked over to the table and poured himself a glass of champagne.

"With good reason," Neal replied. "Can you change him back?"

"I'm right here," Peter said, though neither acknowledged him.

Mozzie took a long drink of the bubbly and rocked back on his heels. "Not precisely, no."

"What?!" Peter's voice definitely squeaked, and his anger levels hit the stratosphere. "What the hell did you do to me, Mozzie? What was in that damn vial? What am I going to tell El?"

Mozzie held up his hands and patted the air in an attempt at a calming gesture. "Calm down, Baby Suit. My guess is that this will wear off when the serum does."

"Your guess? Is that supposed to be comforting?" Peter turned to Neal. "Some help here, please."

"C'mon, Moz. There must be something you can do."

"I could reverse engineer the serum-"

"No."

"It's the fastest way-"

"No. I'm not drinking anything else you cooked up in some safehouse under a Chinese restaurant somewhere in the boroughs." 

"Thai," Mozzie muttered.

Peter glared. "Fix this, Mozzie."

"I'll need to do some research," the other man replied as he headed for the door. He was gone before Peter could say anything else.

~~!!~~

June appeared not long after Mozzie left and asked Neal to watch Bugsy for the week since she was leaving town. He readily agreed and took the dog from her after bidding her safe travels.

Peter hid from June to avoid any uncomfortable, lengthy explanations. He emerged from his hiding spot and soon found himself playing on the floor with the dog like he really was a ten-year-old. 

After a while, he collapsed in an exhausted heap on the sofa where Neal was sketching something with a charcoal pencil. He caught a glimpse of it before Neal hid it away, and he thought it looked a bit like his current form, but he was too tired to bug him about it.

Neal smiled at him and picked a book up off the coffee table and started to read aloud while running his fingers through Peter's hair.

_Squire Treawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof._

_I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:_

_"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—  
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"_

_in the high, old tottering voice that seemed..._

The words faded as Peter drifted into slumber.

~~!!~~

He woke several hours later to darkness and a soft blanket tucked around his much larger body. Stumbling to his feet, Peter hurried into the bathroom and flipped on the light, relieved at the sight of his stubbled fifty-year-old face. 

"Peter?" Neal squinted in the light of the bathroom when he pushed open the cracked door. "You okay?"

"Better than okay." Peter grinned and held his arms out to prove it.

Neal smiled broadly and stepped into Peter's space to wrap his arms around him. "You were cute as a kid," he murmured, "but I like the adult you so much better."

"Me too." Peter wrapped his arms around the younger man and breathed in his scent. "Me too."

~End

Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Excerpt from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Full text can be found free, online at [Project Gutenberg](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/120).
> 
> Title by the amazing pooh_collector!


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